The raising of the height of the walls of the Massingir and Corumana dams in Mozambique will have massive impact on Kruger.

The chairman of The National Parks Support Group Trust, Rupert Lorimer, called on us to fly a fact-finding mission on the impact that the raising of the walls of the two dams in Mozambique would have on the gorges of the Olifants and the Sabie rivers saying “Our intentions would be to photograph the areas of possible inundation, closely examine the relevant contours and thus provide understanding of what could be lost to the KNP.” We applied to David Mabunda, CEO of SANParks, for permission to fly over Kruger promising to give him the data. Permission was granted. John Watson, our first ever helicopter pilot member, and also a member of The Game Rangers Association of Africa, flew this mission for us. Petri Viljoen of the NPSG flew with him to assess and capture data. Petri, now a consultant, spent 14 years in Kruger and did a lot of flying over the park himself so there could not have been a better guide. The stunning pictures are his. Bateleur director, Col Bill de Pinho of SAAF, provided Landsat satellite images to help plot the extent of the flooding that would take place and briefed John and Petri before the flight. The mission task was to provide reasonably accurate information for use by decision-makers. (Or for posterity).
Petri Viljoen is still busy with the final report but wrote this for us:

“The expected flood lines were determined by means of a GIS (Geographic Information System) and NASA’s SRTM Radar Data superimposed over the Landsat satellite images. These maps were also transferred to a GPS/Palm computer and were used as active moving map displays during the helicopter flight over the Olifants and Sabie rivers on 16 April 2005. The low-level flight was conducted in John’s Robinson R44 helicopter and over 350 oblique aerial photographs were taken along the expected flood levels. The exact position of each photograph was determined by means of GPS and specialised computer software. The flight over the Olifants River included the section from just east of Olifants Camp downstream past the Letaba / Olifants River confluence and through the Olifants River Gorge up to the international border with Mozambique.  The lower reaches of the Letaba River just above the Letaba / Olifants River confluence was also surveyed. The survey of the Sabie River included the river section from east of Lower Sabie Camp through the Sabie River Gorge to the SA/Mozambique border. Several large groups of hippo were seen in the Sabie River and some smaller groups in the lower Olifants River. The Olifants River's large concentrations of crocodiles in most pools and along sandbanks were particularly impressive.  All of Petri Viljoen’s photographs are available for viewing on: www.afrika-safari.com/river.html

In an email to his colleagues and in response to the Kruger Park Times article, Philip Owen of Geasphere wrote:

Adrian Bailey wrote to ask us to help him get special pictures for a Conservation story on Marakele National Park and the Dutch private entrepreneur and conservation philanthropist, Paul Fentener van Flissigen

Jay van Deventer stepped in at the last moment. Concerned about the terrain but really just dying to fly, he even managed to do a pre-flight to look at the area and check out the landing strip two days before the mission. He got some pretty good pictures himself (see the picture gallery). He emailed Adrian:
“I went out to look at the area yesterday. I have copied some pics I took. I think these are the angles you are looking for and I agree they tell an interesting story. Strong inversions this time of year make for poor visibility so you may need some fancy filters.

There is a problem, the runway sucks (if you have a wingspan roughly twice that of a Cessna). The large trees on the sides look like there is a problem from the air. I would prefer to land at Thabazimbi, at least until I have had a chance to inspect it from the ground.”

The mission was great, Adrian reporting in his letter of thanks said that he was very happy with the images captured.  He added that the professional assistance provided by The Bateleurs was magnificent and could not have been bettered, even if he could have afforded to charter a flight.

Jay van Deventer had a bee in his bonnet to fly his first mission for us which was requested by Andrew Jenkins of the Western Cape Raptor Research Programme Percy FitzPatrick Institute.  Andrew's report follows:

“Jay really bust a gut to get down to Cape Town for the mission, battling the weather for a week before finally making it to the Mother City. We then had to wait for some local weather to abate, but got up into clear, still air early in the am on the 15th, and flew a long but event-free and very effective survey flight up the transmission lines running roughly between Ceres and Beaufort West.

Our objective was to check for signs of breeding activity at about 15 Martial Eagle nest structures, positioned in the pylons at intervals along the line. This information was needed to ensure that Eskom maintenance teams, detailed to work on the line later in April, could be routed around the occupied nests. Without an accurate heads-up on which nests to avoid, it is likely that some, if not all of the active nests on the line would have been subject to potentially harmful disturbance during a critical stage of the breeding cycle.

We successfully located five nests that were either freshly lined and had attendant adult eagles, or already contained an egg and an incubating bird, and this information was duly communicated to Eskom.

Jay was doggedly determined to do the mission, incredibly accommodating and helpful in setting up the flight, and a great pleasure to work with on the day. He piloted the flight expertly, flying low and slow enough along the line for us to suss out each of the eagle nests with relative ease.
A warm thanks to you, to Jay and to the Bateleurs for your generosity and efficiency. I will be sure to sing your praises and advertise your services at every opportunity in the future, and look forward to working with you again!
Dr Andrew Jenkins

Read Jay's essay entitled The Warbirds, the Cable and the Trapeze Artists... Click Here

We received a mission request from Wally Menne, Chairman of the Timberwatch Coalition, the regional KZN Midlands/Pmb forestry watchdog.
The description of issues that were to be  covered during the flight included the extent of illegal timber plantations, such as plantations not licensed,  planted in wetlands, riparian zones etc. The objectives were to obtain a photographic/video record of the extent of the  problem to use in a video production for media and education purposes.
Bateleur Pilot Barry De Groot jumped at this mission.
Shortly after the flight Wally sent this message to his colleagues and us:
“There was a "Bateleurs" sponsored flying mission over the area on Sunday morning to film and photograph "Illegal Timber Plantations". Although timber plantations are a significant problem from a water-consumption and grassland biodiversity destruction point of view, we also noticed:

• Widespread problems in terms of serious  over-grazing and loss of ground-cover
• Heavy infestations of Bugweed in indigenous  forests (easily visible from the air but no doubt much Bramble too) 
• Many areas, including river-courses invaded by unmanaged Wattle thickets
• Extensive draining of wetlands in higher parts towards Impendle
• A lot of bad soil erosion where old cattle tracks and roads have not been managed.
• Old seemingly abandoned plantations of Eucalyptus that should be properly managed or removed.

It will not help keeping housing estate developers out of the area if existing property owners do not give urgent and appropriate attention to all of these problems.

On the timber plantation issue, DWAF is in the process of taking legal action against property-owners with unlicensed or otherwise unlawful timber plantations. It is hoped that once a few cases have been successfully pursued through the courts that other contraventions will be voluntarily removed and the
areas rehabilitated.

Timberwatch is planning to use the video material obtained on the flight to produce an educational video for distribution to land-owners, schools, government officials and timber companies.”
Wally also wrote to Barry saying:

“Just a short note to say thanks again for this morning's flight.  Your help with planning the route is greatly appreciated, and all your passengers agreed that the flight was a great success.  Hopefully the video footage and still pics will all come out well.

In due course we will submit a report to The Bateleurs giving details of how the material has been used.”

Preliminary report on Bateleurs assisted flight - Researcher: Alistair McInnes (Durban Natural Science Museum)
 
”I was assisted by Bateleurs pilot, Jay van Deventer, in an investigation into the location of Grey-headed Gull breeding colonies in Gauteng’s East Rand on Monday 16 May 2005. In addition to determining localities of breeding sites, photographs of potential sites (inundated ephemeral pans) were taken so that various habitat characteristics could be quantified.
 
The flight was extremely successful in that we managed to locate and photograph three previously unknown sites where these birds occur. All sites identified as having gulls were revisited by vehicle. One of these sites, a pan within the Modderfontein area (2628BA), was found to have approximately 130 breeding pairs with at least 100 nests observed. This pan represents one of four sites in the Gauteng general area that has more than 100 breeding pairs of this species. Due to the location and uniqueness of this site we have decided to conduct research there looking into various aspects of the Grey-headed Gull’s breeding ecology. I would like to stress the point that, were it not for an aerial survey of this area, it would have been extremely difficult to locate this area on the ground. Eastern Gauteng has over 150 pans scattered over four quarter degree squares and it would have been logistically difficult to cover all of these sites by vehicle. I would therefore like to acknowledge the efforts of your organisiation, and in particular Jay who proved to be very helpful and skilled as a pilot.
Many thanks for the generous assistance.

We received a Mission Request from Working for Wetlands to provide an aerial platform for their proposed survey of the Limpopo floodplain and adjacent area in the newly-constituted Mapungubwe National Park. An aerial perspective would give them the holistic overview of the project in the shortest possible time, to assist with the rapid implementation of rehabilitating the wetland area of interest.
     Mapungubwe NP is a conglomeration of previously disparate tracts of land, that were used for agricultural purposes prior to the consolidation into the  core National Park, and as such bore the scars of  diverse earthworks which in many cases had an extremely negative impact on the natural scheme of things.
The project   aimed at identifying what needed to be done in order to rehabilitate the entire area into a homogenous wetland area once more, and The Bateleurs  were requested to provide several microlights or gyrocopters to facilitate this. With their slow flying speed and excellent all-round visibility they were deemed by Working for Wetlands to be the ideal aircraft.
   An appeal for volunteers was put out to our pilots, and was over-subscribed within a few hours such was the enthusiasm of the response. Thank you guys for this level of support!
      Mapungubwe, which means the “place of jackals” in the Venda language, lies up to the north of the country, snug against the banks of Rudyard Kipling’s great grey green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees!
It adjoins the meeting of three international borders, between South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana, and that great golden river of sand that constitutes the Shashe River for most of the year has its confluence at Mapungubwe too.
     The park has been established as a cultural as well as ecological conservation unit, and protects the remains of the ruined city and ancient peoples who lived there. These ruins were first discovered in 1933, and one of the significant artifacts excavated was the famous golden rhino. These beautiful and convoluted sandstone hills have been the home to various groups of inhabitants beginning around 50,000 years ago. More recently they were occupied by Iron Age inhabitants, followed by successive groups culminating in the Mapungubwe people who occupied the hilltop city for about the final 70 years. Then around 1300 AD severe climate change (!) dried the area out so severely that the inhabitants abandoned the site and moved North east to where Great Zimbabwe is found today.

The Bateleurs team consisted of Roelf in a gyro, and, Peter, Rich and me in microlights, ably supported by Lara and Carol as vehicle backup.
   The three microlights flew up from Gauteng on the Saturday in readiness for the Mission task beginning at dawn the following morning. Our gyro pilot, Roelf Palm flew in on Sunday at sparrows to meet up with the remainder of the team.
    We carefully criss-crossed the floodplain and surrounds as our mission specialists from Working for Wetlands and Kruger NP, lead by the Warden of Mapungubwe identified and photographed the many points requiring attention. In an hour and a half of flying the four aircraft comprehensively covered the area, to the complete satisfaction of our specialists, and in the process cementing their understanding of what needed to be done to implement the process of restoration and rehabilitation.
    We landed and disembarked our primary passengers, and then set about the secondary objective of our mission, which was to give as many of the parks staff as possible an aerial perspective of the domain they were tasked with conserving and protecting. Numerous flights were then undertaken, until at last the long line of waiting pax was no more. From a personal perspective, I flew one of the section rangers over his area of responsibility, and it was gratifying in the extreme to enjoy his enthusiasm as he pointed out various places of interest to me. It was his first flight in an aircraft of any kind, and over his “turf” as well, and he continually exclaimed with delight as he observed the visual scene from above, of an area he knew well but from an entirely different perspective. His comment “hierdie vliegtuig maak die plek klein,”” this aircraft makes the place small” was a telling one, illustrating so clearly just how effective The Bateleurs could be in rendering assistance to land bound people.
     Herewith an excerpt from Marius Snyder’s of SANParks’ report: “The flights were very successful.  The aerial perspective allowed the team to understand the 2 wetland systems much better. We were able to verify theories about how these systems function. Various impacts on the wetlands were discovered and plotted.
Ground teams will now be able to access these sites without wasting time and resources. Impacts will be accessed on the ground and interventions will be designed accordingly. It is estimated that the number of impacts recorded during this flight will sustain more than 20 jobs over a 3 year period when budgets are made available.
Even junior park officials were able to familiarize themselves with the park from the air and gained an aerial perspective.”

    Our thanks to the very courteous staff of Mapungubwe NP who accommodated us for the duration, and to Piet –Louis Grundling and Marius Snyders for the very professional way in which they utilized our services.
    My thanks to the Team for another mission well done. Thanks guys!
Joe Holmes

www.bateleurs.org